Tag Archives: recycle

I hear a lot about crafty people making things out of recycled wood. Specifically, old pallets. I’m not typically that ambitious.

But… I had a garden window box that was on its last leg this past fall, so I figured, hey, why not?

After cruising the seedy part of town in my truck, I located a pile of pallets that seemed right for the picking. I ended up stalking these pallets for the better part of an hour while I tried to determine the proper pallet-taking etiquette. (Do you just take them? Leave a note? Ask someone?) It was more stress than I had factored into the entire project.

After getting them home, I got straight to work in trying to dismantle them. Since my crowbar would barely budge them and my mind-control in willing them apart wasn’t doing the job, I spent another hour surfing YouTube for some special trick to get them apart without mangling the wood. I chose this one, mostly because his British accent was soothing and I was starting to redline with frustration. The longer bar coupled with patience sorted it out.

After I had my measurements, I went to work cutting the pieces to length. I wanted a rustic look with mismatched seams, so I used some scrap wood as nailers on the inside to hold it in place until I could assemble the whole unit with wood screws.

I used a semi-transparent wood stain (Cabot / Cordova Brown) and added black landscape fabric to the inside. A couple of hanging plants re-potted into the new box and then I hung it on the hangers from the original box. Since my old garden box was plastic, I did have to change the anchors in order to ensure the weight of the pallet box would be supported on the hangers.